Paxus's blog

Denny Ray is one of the saints around here. Perhaps it was the mid 80s he was a member here and was the equipment maintenance manager. It is a bit hard to describe how much of a headache this job is. We have a huge campus, with all kinds of dishwashers and compressors and refrigerators and generators and food processing equipment and gas and electric systems. And because Denny is so good with all of these he has saved the community a fortune. Not just because he does not charge us half the time and when he does charge us he bills half what he should. Not just because he basically forced us to shift gas companies which saved us over $10K in the first year.

No you can’t just be handy or thrifty to get saint status in community land, it is a high road. And one of the ways Denny does it is by watching the neighborhood. By doing the networking and community relations work which Twin Oaks ought to make labor creditable, but largely does not. Sometimes this appears in the form of a go cart or rocking horse. Most recently it has shown up as pears.

Our courtyard has a beautiful pear tree that Hildegard has organized with a bucket for fallen or eaten pears and two different length bamboo grabber sticks. These sticks are so simple, yet very effective at grabbing high pears with minimal impact on the area the pear was in before grabbing. You need to let them ripen a bit after falling, but they are pretty tasty pears.

Denny saw the sister trees to our on land right off W. Old Mountain Road which is our back door to the conference site. They were full of pears and Denny knew that the woman who owned the house had died. So Denny started walking down the street trying to find out who the caretaker for that house was and ultimately discovered that it was Tommy Mullins.

Beth thought it would be nice for our Dutch guests (Micha, Wieneke and their son Fabian, who i was the donor for) to see the new visitor center at the US Capitol while they were in Washington DC (which i call Death City).
So we all packed into Shana’s Subraru, including Beth’s daughter Rachel and i hide in the back to evade the DC police in our overcrowded vehicle.

The  first hurdle was the security at the Capitol which wanted us to throw out all our food and the water bottle containers.  This infuriated both Wieneke and Beth who did not want to dispose of the perfectly good reusable water bottles they had.  So we delayed our tour and Beth took them back to the car.

The Capitol guides are a cross between a security guard and tour leader.  Ours started her tour with the emphatic statement “You have two tour options today, you can go with me for about an hour or you can wander off from the group and get a tour from the capitol police, which is very short!”

And so it was for the next 40 minutes or so as we saw the myriad statues and paintings which fill the Capitol with the LA jewish high school basketball team which toured with us.  Our guide was regularly directing tourists where they could and could not stand or sit, that they could not use their own headphone jacks in the free radio headsets which werre provided all the while asking triva questions about California’s pending statehood anniversary and basketball tidbits from Kansas (really).

At the end of the tour, Beth asked Fabian how he had liked it and he responded (in a manor i could her myself quiping) “I thought they had outlawed torture in this country.”

If you have acccess to Facebook there is a cute video of Fabian and Rachel Spinning in the Emancipation hall.

i did not think love of games was a genetically transmitted trait, but it seems Fabian has it.  After an exciting game of Blokus with Feonix, Micha, Wieneke and Fabian, the boys got down to some serious Yahtzee.

They taught me these lovely additional rules, where if you complete your desired roll configuration before your three rolls are done you can bank your unused roll as a stripe on your score card.  If you want an extra role you can go into debt by placing an egg at the bottom of your score cards.  Eggs cancel stripes, stripes cancel eggs.

Thru some lucky rolls, i got way ahead and on my last roll i had 8 tries to complete my Yahtzee and got it in 6.  So generously i gave one of my stripes to each of Micha and Fabian.

Fabian, who was the last to roll got his desired 4 of a kind without using the stripe i gave him.  But Micha suggested he re-roll the one unmatching dice anyway.  His 2 became a 4 and after the counting, Fabian had won by a single point.

So i said to Micha “i gave him the chance and you gave him the advice and thus Fabian wins.”  And so it is, well beyond Yahzee, these additional rules for life.

Fabian and Paxus playing Chess on the Ferry w/ Micha and Feonix on phone

Kelsey is wonderful and i am going to miss her terribly when she joins her lover in Tanzania soon.  She has been a huge help in the Heroes homeschooling game.  She asked me if she were a Caucasian person going to a foreign land of a different race  how would she best learn to assimilate.

i said ‘Go to an american who has been there for a long time and say “tell me what you think i need to know about these people and this place to fit in and serve.”  Listen carefully to what they say and take lots of notes.  Then take their story to a respected elder native and tell them what you heard and get them to correct it.’

“That is brilliant” Kelsey exclaimed, which are about my most favorite words.

“That is why i get the big labor credits” i quip and several folx at the table laugh (Roberto and Eva V).  i then go on to explain that big labor credits are still only worth one hour each, but they are the oversized credits you get for doing amazing things.

Once upon a time, in this type of conversation i would have said “that is why i make the big bucks.” The joke here being that i make $85/month.

We are facing a vexing world, we need to be clever. And i try to do it when ever i am able, regardless of the compensation.

one of the early options when you google image search for 'brilliant'

There are a couple of stunning errors being made which have my head in a twist, because there are clever well paid people who are supposed to be catching these opportunities.

The recipe for a successful boycott requires an easy way to switch products and cleear branding.  The unsuccessful BP boycott has both.  Gas consumers can simply drive across the street to buy from another vender and while BP has some subsidiary brands, if a significant number of customers simply avoided their branded stations it would have a further crippling effect on BPs profits.

Why isn’t someone knocking on my door asking me to stop buying until they have paid the $20 billion promised in damages or some other reasonable demand?  Why dont we have people dressed as dirty birds or dead fish at BP stations?  [Tho there was a wonderful action at the Tate Museum in London.]

Part of the answer is that we are pretending that we can do push button political action and click something on Facebook and move on.

So i am working on a more complex entry perhaps called betrayal and bolo – so stay tuned for that.  But i did not want to let more time go by without posting and there is a cute myth story running around the Ta Chai living room with me.

So the myth is that we are poor.  Many people in the mainstream, especially friends of members, believe we are in need.

Understandably, they look at our low allowance and generally modest consumption patterns and assume this represents a kind of poverty.

Numerically (which is the most precise and generally least useful) we have a bunch of money in the bank, 450 beautiful acres with a couple dozen high functioning low impact buildings.  There is a weight room and a sauna, fresh grown food for most of the year and membership comes with full medical, dental and home care if needed.

But what is more important is that between the commie clothes library and our fleets of bikes and cars, most members (i believe) dont fell strong desires to have more.

But the myth persists, and combined with our friends generosity and sense of humor we get a bunch of presents.  Today in what is sometimes called “the State Room” Bochie is running around in a Snow White costume that we are convinced was hand and machine sewn by someones 80 year old grandma, perhaps as th last thing she did on this earth.

There are perhaps 2 dozen pairs of high heels mostly in good shape which will look fabulous on Valerie or Mushroom.

But perhaps the most fun was watching Bochie go hunting thru the boxes of handbags and shoes and art supplies, giggling like a slightly crazy child at their best birthday.

We are have lots of different types of events here at Twin Oaks. Anniversary is one of my favorites, in part because it is a principally internal affair, with most of the guests being ex-members and the closer friends of community.

This year was a smaller celebration (43 not being an especially significant number) and it was precious.  The weather cooperated, the home-grown entertainment (especially Uncle Trout’s Dead cover band) engaging, the food was glorious (see viz Rich’s fabled flame thrower salmon below) and our spirits were high.

Rich viz

uses flame thrower to cook salmon

From a funological perspective, we even had our bonding crisis experience.  For the last few songs of the Dead cover bands performance, the wind kicked up and what looked like a serious storm started to blow in.  Communards, quick to help jumped up and deployed tarps.  I had a precious moment dancing with Mushroom as we both held on of the canopy poles to the ground wrestling the storm winds.  And in what perhaps typifies our collective response, as a handful of dancers moved in to secure the stage from the storm, other participants who had been sitting, instead fo getting out of the pending storm jumped up to take the dancers places.  The storm blew past the revealers partied on.

telegenic entertainers

As i looked around at the highly telegenic crowd of current communards, each more interesting than the last, i realized that the old adage was true.  Kat‘s last book was cleverly called “Is it Utopia yet?”  To which we occasionally answer “No, but on a good day you can see it from here.”

Anniversary was a good day.

It has been a rough couple of weeks, projects have been crashing, i have been struggling with some of my intimate relationships.  And a couple of days back when things got bad and i was in the Twin Oaks courtyard i asked myself “Who should i go see? Who will make me feel better?”  And i remembered that Willow was with Trout down at the pond fishing.  So i toddled down to the pond to find my son, his fishing instructor and a 17.5? wide mouth bass.

Willow Star Falcon with his fish

Trout (who is a member here) informed me that Willow had caught the fish on his very first casting of the day.  Apparently, this is not unusual for Willow.  While i was there, Willow caught another fish that he knew was too small before he even reeled it out.  Trout used the pliers while Willow held it and then threw the happy to be released fish back in or tiny pond.

As therapy for me it worked brilliantly.  My son was pleased and proud of his accomplishment.  i ran around and got a camera to take a couple of shots.  Trout agreed to cook the fish that was served at the community dinner and Willow got to take some of the time he spent catching it as labor credits – which made him doubly happy.

Willow, Trout (the person) and Bass (the fish)

“My father was the president and founder of a successful architecture firm. My mother is the founder and executive director of 200 person non-profit. My brother is the lead singer for a rock band which has multiple Grammys and gold records. And i am the tofu delivery boy.”

i love delivering tofu.  i get to drive the tofu truck, which is just large enuf to be a real truck and just small enuf for me to get into to trouble for it.   i love decoding the parking complexities of Richmond during the day, the slightly rickity hand truck i get to move the crates around in.  All the restaurant workers who say nice things about our products and offer me coffee (which i dont drink) and other treats (which i do eat).

i breeze into the walk in fridge at VCU and unload amongst the bustle which is a huge institutional kitchen.  i drop at a tiny cafe where the death metal music is always blaring in the kitchen.  The Harrison Street Cafe uses huge quantities of Tempeh and are always friendly and generous.  i deliver tofu scraps for the Richmond chapter of  Food not Bombs to the ever cool staff at Ellwood Thompsons.

My personal flavor of propaganda includes rants about a number of things i rarely do including make apologies, capitalize the pronoun i and  use towels.  On this list is the celebration and generally even the acknowledgement of birthdays.  These often feel like obligatory events and i prefer home grown and otherwisee inspired ones.  When i told Hawina, many years ago, “i dont do birthdays.”  She replied “That’s fine, your going to remember mine”

A year ago it was Saara Michel Tansey’s 21st birthday.  i barely knew her then, but somewhat uncharacteristically, i was working hard to get her a job offer  from NIRS (the anti-nuclear group i volunteer with) by that date.  Mary Olsen, who runs the NIRS South East office, had recommended her highly, she was experienced in local organizing against the proposed new reactors in Jenkinsville SC and she was well connected to the youth climate movement.  I had also met her briefly at the Carbon Free, Nuclear Free conference in Takoma Park a couple of months earlier and she seemed quirky and fun.

i failed to convince the NIRS Executive Director, my old friend, Michael Marriott to hire her.  Which turned out to be one of the luckiest failures of my life.

Fearing that we (in this case the anti-nuclear movement) would loose her to some other cause, i asked Sara to come work on the Villages in the Sky project.  i wrote what i thought was an enticing and clever job description and she agreed.  Both of us thinking this would be a stepping stone for her to go to NIRS when the money needed to hire her was in hand.

We have monthly family adventures.  Sky, Willow, Hawina and i get together and do something fun as the infamous “Star Family.”

Yesterday we just played Cosmic Encounter because Willow was just not going to a movie, no matter how compelling the trainer is.  And i have to boast that my 8 year old son beat his three parents, in a game that some very clever adult friends of mine have just found too complicated to learn or play.

But the funniest part was when we were driving from Twin Oaks to Woodfolk in Cville.  We were playing 20 questions (tho we don’t actually count the questions, like good anarchists) and it was Willow’s turn to have the secret.

Hawina’s first question was “Is it a Rubics cube?”

Willow lit up “That is it!, How did you know ?, Your a genius!”

And then in complete deadpan he said “Of course it is not a Rubics Cube”

i nearly wet myself laughing.

Earlier in the day i went into the ABC store and bought a bottle of Vodka when i was the tripper.  The woman behind the counter had never met me before, but after i paid her she said.

“You don’t want a bag do you?”

So the CNN piece on Twin Oaks is up and you can link it here

But the best part is that there is a story.  Clementine who is featured prominently in this video was off the farm on a craft fair.  She walked into her hotel room turned on the TV and saw a shirt that she recognized and then she recognized the person wearing the shirt, which was her!

For someone who is a bit of a renegade from Babylon this was a bit shocking, in a comic weird way.

hanging gardens of Babylon

Curiously in the Heroes home schooling fantasy role playing game i am organizing, we are currently rescuing the hanging gardens of Babylon by sending our young adventurers back thru a time machine and building an Archimedes Screw and negotiating with agrarian cultures and beavers who are diverting the water

i crashed a psycho-drama conference this weekend.  i learned a bit about sociometry for measuring social relationships and about the living newspaper.

break out of your boxes

i dont think many people crash professional conferences of this type.  It was as accessible as making a duplicating of one of the name tags. And being nice to the charming other participants.

My charming nefarious accomplice Mz Abigirl and i watlzed into the Presidents reception, enjoyed the fancy food and hobnobbed with some of the other participants until one of the apparent organizers of the event did not seem to recognize my name from my nametag.  Perhaps next time i pull this stunt i will be Pat.

“i am running away from home” Deborah was furious at East Wind.  Four people had put in written anonymous concerns about Sara.  Technically, this means she would be forced to leave the community.  But more troublesome for Sara was that these same four concerns could stop her from visiting East Wind after Villages in the Sky is complete in June.  She has hoped and planned to live here afterwards.

Sara sleeping on a comfy greyhound station floor.

None of the concerns were substantive – she stayed in her room passed the April 1st agreed move out date to the Seed Camp.  Someone thought she was stealing spices – which she had permission to take.  But it was still a sting and even the next day after three of the concerns were withdrawn (and thus technically she was liberated from her threatened expulsion) her relationship with the community was shaken.

But like any large community, East Wind is a complicated heterogeneous group.  While some were upset, others were helpful and supportive.  Roxy and Joey were getting a modified garden cart together for the VIS crew.  And amongst many there is still a feeling of generosity and hope for better relations in the future.

I felt like we turned a corner today and i am especially appreciative of Zeke who did some long and heavy talking with people about this.

Almost every month for the past dozen years, right around the full moon, Shal and i go out and climb trees.

Find the hidden objects in this picture

When i started i was pretty poor at it.  Fortunately, Shal invented patience and these days i can bound up an ironwood, with lousy shoes and poor visibility.  i never climbed trees as a kid, apparently it was not yet time for it.

Shal on the ground

Our full moon rituals tend to start late and run late, last night i went to bed sometime after 3 AM.  But the bright moon light was highly illuminating, i could almost differentiate the vibrant colors in Shal hat.

Shal is one of my dearest friends.  We have shared intimate relations, we have worked projects together, we are each other confidants.  And yet we are quite different as people go.  Shal is careful, i am reckless.  Shal is patient, i am already on to the next thing.  Shal is modest.

At first they just wanted to do a piece on our most friendly building and Valerie (who co-manages Twin Oaks recruiting and outreach with me) thought she would do it by herself (she installed parts of the solar photo-voltaic system and has given dozens of tours of Kawaeh).  When CNN expanded their scope and wanted to cover more ecological aspects of the commune, Valerie called in help.

When i found out CNN was coming i got excited.  They were coming for lunch and we also had a student group which was coming for lunch that was paying for it so i thought i would use some of the money they were giving us to add some extra ingredients to make a nicer lunch.  Madge was not having any of it.

Madge and i have had our run ins before, especially when we were managing different aspects of the community hammocks business together.  And i respect Madge, she gets stuff done, she is thorough and tough.

In this case she was the lunch cook.  I was asking if she would expand the menu to use fancier (store bought) food.  She pointed out that the tripper would not be able to get food back in time.  i said i could organize a runner to do the shopping if she would come up with a list.  She pointed out that the regular food was perfectly fine and she would be sure to make enuf for the additional guests, and we were done.  She was, of course, right.

CNN came, they shoot and interviewed for 5 hours for a piece which will be 2 minutes long run right around Earth Day – there are 13 other ecological initiatives which CNN will present on that single show.

I gave my usual spiel about how sharing is needed to save the world.

i got to go to St Mary’s today.  It is an idyllic campus on the Maryland peninsula, where i drove today to give a couple of presentations on Village in the Sky (VIS) and one on polyamory.  It has always been my hope that this honors college would be a feeder school for Twin Oaks and Acorn, a number of friends of mine are graduates (Gpaul, Heather, Tim, Jon/Goat, Stephanie).  I was just bopping in for a day, but the larger group we sent (Keyvah, Gpaul and Jon) had done a number of  classes and presentations on our communities.

For years now i have been calling this group and others affiliated with it the St Mary’s Mafia.  And while it is quite different from contemporary organized crime, i like to believe that the Cosa Nostra would be happy to be affiliated with this group which builds rogue tree houses, run renegade seed businesses and sends troops off to Burning Man.

Mafia Family Tree

i was painfully reminded by the low attendance at the VIS workshops that i depend on good logistics organizers, often lovers of mine like Keyvah or Hawina or Sara to help manifest these events well.

But the polyamory workshop was well attended and one participant was interested in how poly family works.  I only briefly told him about what i think is one of the most important the success story of my life.  The vignette goes like this: